The following is a article written in response to the academic proposal by Keane. I am planning on submitting this to Thesis XII along with Keane's rebuttal. However, I would like to send this through one last editing phase, and so, if you would like to read this and offer comments, I would be more than happy to read them. Thank you.

The Morality of Meat

Here at the outset, allow me to state what this argument is and what this argument is not. This argument is not a proactive moral justification for eating meat. If indeed such an argument exists, it is not evident to me. This argument is not a condonation of current meat farming practices. This is not an argument about sport. This argument is neither an argument from health nor an argument from taste. This is a relational argument. This is an argument about plants and about animals. This is an argument about life, life that is inherent to all organisms, regardless of species, genus, or phylum; regardless of kingdom.

Factory farming is morally reprehensible. The vegetarian diet is a healthier lifestyle. Killing animals for sport is unjustifiable. The taste of meat is insufficient to justify the killing of an animal. Now allow me to address what the real issue is. Is it, or is it not, morally acceptable to kill an animal for food?

To eat is to kill(1). Let there be no confusion about this point. The meat eater is guilty of no more deaths than the vegetarian. The vegetarian position necessitates a difference between the life of a plant and the life of an animal. This difference must be substantial enough to render killing an animal immoral, and killing a plant moral. What is this difference?

The most common response is quite simple: animals are sentient. Animals possess a nervous system and as a result have the capacity of sensation and therefore the ability to suffer. This is a traditional contrast between plants and animals, though studies at the universities of Berlin, California, and Pennsylvania have discovered evidence to the contrary(2). These studies demonstrate many activities in plants that were previously thought to be exclusive to animals. Plants, though the study was conducted with Brussels sprouts, are lively and actively attempt to remain that way. Most notably, plants react quickly to threats and, amongst other defense mechanisms, release volatile chemicals that both attract larger predators to eat the attackers and warn nearby plants to begin hardening their own defenses.

If plants are sentient, the difference is invalidated. Let us assume for a moment that plants are not sentient, and that these varying mechanisms are mere automata. The fact that animals can feel pain is sufficient moral grounds to not cause pain to animals. I expressed above the reprehensible nature of factory farming, the method by which we currently keep and kill the animals we use for food. Inherent in this claim is the need for a change. Consider then a situation in which we were to give to animals: relatively free range to roam, a long life of pleasure, and a painless death. This would render the sentience of animals, and any other organism then, irrelevant to this debate.

Another common response is that animals are self-conscious. This theory encounters several epistemological problems. The current experiments we employ are inadequate and even then, only a few species have passed them. These tests attract interpretive criticism, by philosophers such as Peter Carruthers(3). Psychologists, such as Jonathan Crystal and Al Foote, have also adamantly criticized the methodology of the experiments(4). Lacking, as it is for the moment, an objective verifiability, self-consciousness in animals cannot be used to advocate for vegetarianism.

This is not a comprehensive refutation of the vegetarian position; there are countless other arguments, and countless other counter-arguments. As animals reliant on the consumption of food, we face a dismal choice: eat animals or eat plants. I have attempted to demonstrate that, if we execute our choice properly, there is no significant moral obligation to choose one over the other. Meat eaters would then inherit a difficult burden to demonstrate a practical method by which we can provide the necessary requirements (i.e. painless death, good life) that would justify the killing of an animal. Until such a method is implemented, the meat-eater must refrain from carnivorous behavior. However, there is no absolute and moral reason to not, under any circumstances, consume meat.

-Jacob Wheeler

(1): There are diets to which this is inaccurate: fruitarians will eat only fruit, therefore not killing the plant.
(2): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22angi.html?_r=2
(3): Carruthers, P. (2009). “Meta-cognition in Animals: A Skeptical Look,” Mind & Language, 23: 58–89.
(4): Crystal, J.D. and Foote, A.L. (2009). “Metacognition in animals,” Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, 4: 1–16.